The Board of Men and Aldermen will not endorse a jail at the Ceres Industrial Park.

“It is clearly in the best interest of the city of Vicksburg and Warren County for future development to emphatically say today that the Ceres property is not an option,” Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said. “You can’t leave it out there. It’s not to slam anything; it’s just to take it from the public eye and from the economic prospects — potential people coming here. For that reason, I don’t think the city will join you in going to Ceres.”

Flaggs’ comments came Tuesday at a meeting of city and county officials to discuss Ceres as the site for a new county jail. Warren County supervisors Nov. 20 approved a site in the industrial park for the facility, causing concerns from Flaggs and county economic development officials.

He called the meeting to find a compromise on a site, and asked county officials to look for alternate sites, adding the city would assist in the search and suggested a site in the northern part of the city near U.S. 61 North. He did not name the site.

State law requires the county jail to be inside the city limits of the county seat. Because the Ceres site is outside the city limits, the county needs the city to agree to the site and get special legislation to put the jail in the industrial park. The lack of the city’s endorsement effectively kills Ceres as a jail site.

“That was pretty plain,” Board of Supervisors President Richard George, who attended the meeting, said of Flaggs comments.

He said there were a few other options for a jail site, including Flaggs’ suggestion.

“I don’t know. I’ll just relay the information to the board and there’ll be some discussion, I suspect. We’ll review that alternate site and see what it offers.”

During the meeting, George and board attorney Blake Teller discussed the supervisors’ decision to locate the jail at Ceres.

George said the supervisors looked at multiple sites before narrowing the field to three sites of 50 acres each.

“Ceres was always a choice; it was a choice when we first started,” he said. “As far as lack of inconvenience for law enforcement, the closer in you are (to a jail), the better off you are. The closer you are into the city and the current facility, the more people you’re around, the more obstacles you run into. We ran into some pretty serious obstacles.”

The biggest concerns of the people near the other sites, he added, were property values and safety.

“When you’ve got your taxpayers telling you they don’t want something, and you got numbers of them telling you they don’t want something, I think it behooves us to pay attention, which we did,” George said.

He said Ceres offered ample land to develop with utilities, and there were no surprises as far as future development.

The selected site had a dead-end road.

“If you go there, you have business there,” he said.

It was an available site with room for expansion, he said.

“The concerns that the public has raised about their safety and the safety of their children has had just as much impact on this decision as cost.”

South Ward Alderman Alex Monsour and Pablo Diaz, Vicksburg-Warren Chamber of Commerce executive director both raised concerns about economic development.

“When you’re working with the governor’s office and MDA (Mississippi Development Authority) and they tell you it may be a detriment to us to go after and for them to attract the type businesses we need to, it’s something we really have to view and vet before we pull the trigger on this,” Monsour said.

He also suggested the supervisors consider other sites before making a final decision on Ceres, raising concerns about being able to attract businesses that could serve the Continental Tire plant.

From the MDA point of view, Diaz said, a jail would kill economic development in Ceres.

“We’re all coming together and putting so much energy and resources into building our economic development effort,” he said.

“We don’t want to, without trying, undermine that for the future.

“It’s not a good idea to put a jail in an industrial park; that’s just general book knowledge from economic development 101,” Diaz said.

While he was pleased the board is moving forward to build a new jail, Sheriff Martin Pace said he was concerned about the site because of the distance deputies and police officers would have to travel moving prisoners, to jail, court and other facilities.

“I would hope there would be someplace that would be closer than at the county line. To have officers travel that far to book somebody in jail is pulling officers from their areas of responsibility.”

Pace, however, said he would do anything he can to assist in the design of the jail and manage the new jail “as effectively and as humanly possible. I’ll give 100 percent of my energy, and once the board makes a decision and that is the decision, that’s the one I’ll support.”